The stage revolves, the music builds, and Alexander Hamilton scribbles furiously at his desk as the voices around him demand to know why he writes “like [he’s] running out of time.” It’s true that Hamilton wrote an unbelievable volume of works, but the same question could be asked of the show’s composer, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the two and a half hour score of rapid lyrics, impossibly clever rhymes and rhythms, hilarious jokes, some catchy and some heart-wrenching melodies. Watching the show unfold, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around exactly how he did it. But the “why” was obvious: it’s enormously entertaining, a brilliant discovery in what musical theatre can be, and it’s relevant now.
Hamilton peels the founding fathers off the pages of forgotten history textbooks and presents to the audience a group of ambitious, competitive, complicated, and vibrant human beings. The checkpoints on the timeline are there: the revolution, writing the constitution, the Washington administration, and of course Hamilton’s duel with Aaron Burr. The story, though, really happens between these moments, closely following Hamilton’s personal life and his evolution as a character. In the opening numbers, young Hamilton is so eager and passionate that no matter what you know of him already, you have to root for him as he blindly but boldly stumbles into the revolution. When his ambition and obsession with legacy hurts his family and others, the audience questions if he can be called a hero.
Although based in history, Hamilton tells a story of today. The founding fathers are played by black and Latino actors, the intention of the casting being that the cast “looks like America looks now,” Miranda told the New York Times. The score sounds like America sounds today. It’s a little bit of everything: hip-hop, rap, and pop influences fused with recognizable components of musical theatre. The show presents history as a piece of the present, reminding a modern audience of the foundations that the country was built upon and forcing them to consider what it all means today.
Hamilton isn’t just revolutionary in reference to its plot, composition, and production. The Hamilton team is flipping a lot of standards to make the show accessible. Due to the show’s wild popularity, tickets are expensive and hard to get, but for every show a limited number of $10 tickets are made available via a box office lottery. With many shows adopting mobile lottery systems, theatre fans are lamenting the decline of rush policies. Rushing shows, standing outside the box office for hours in the early morning with a bunch of other broke college kids and theatre fans, is all part of an experience, and although some shows still use this system, many of the most popular shows do not. Miranda, however, has made the “Ham 4 Ham” lottery its own experience by performing for lottery hopefuls alongside other cast members and surprise guests from shows like Fun Home and Les Mis.
For those who can’t see the show, the cast album provides a pretty good alternative. The 46-track album, which was streamed online before its September 25 release, only excludes one short scene. The album presents what is truly remarkable about this show: the writing. The cast is incredibly talented, the choreography, set, and costumes beautifully executed, but the genius of the show comes from the fascinating string of words that tell the story of one brilliant mind from another.
